The Uist Eco Film Festival is a new 3-day film festival (29 April – 1 May 2011) screening environmentally-themed international documentary and fiction film and video based at Balivanich Community Hall on Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The main themes of the festival will be Climate Change and Sustainability in relation to island and maritime contexts in three strands – what we’ve got, how we stand to lose it & how we can change the situation.

Organised by Taigh Chearsabhagh & Sustainable Uist, the festival aims to increase appreciation of landscape and ecology and enhance understanding of the global and local environmental issues through screening of excellent moving image, related talks and events, with ancillary screenings at primary and secondary schools throughout the Uists.

headline films include the UK premiere of Climate of Change (narrated by Tilda Swinton), The Economics of Happiness, The Wild Places of Essex (with Robert Macfarlane), Cape Farewell’s Art from a Changing Arctic and the Oscar-nominated Waste Land. The festival will encourage debate on sustainability in an island and maritime context during post screening discussions with speakers including Ruth Little (Cape Farewell), Angus Ainsley (Waste Land producer) and the prominent Human Ecologist, Alastair Macintosh.

Plus supporting films both local and global – Wake Up, Freak Out, There Once was an Island, Uist Childrens’ Parliament film Cairn, FilmG winner Saighal Plastaig Ghòrdan, Eigg Electric, Island on the Edge, Beyond a Tangled Shore, Dalziell + Scullions’ Speaking the Land, Sea Eagles & Me, and many more….

Uist Eco Film Festival will also feature a pedal-powered pop-up cinema for audience members to try.

The festival is funded by Regional Screen Scotland and Scottish Islands 2011 and the Climate Challenge Fund. Taigh Chearsabhagh is supported by Creative Scotland and Comhairle nan Eilean Siar.

Find out more and book online at http://uistfilm.org/

Source: Taigh Chearsabhagh